ELECTIONS MALIBU : After Three Years, Voters Set to Decide : Cityhood: Even opponents predict that after Tuesday, the county will have a new city.

After three years of effort by cityhood backers and months of stalling by Los Angeles County officials, Malibu voters Tuesday will finally get the chance to decide whether the seaside community becomes a city.

And although approval is widely expected, with even opponents predicting that resentment at the county’s long attempts to delay the election will help push cityhood over the top, there is still plenty of suspense.

In addition to deciding whether Malibu becomes a city, voters will also pick a five-member City Council from among 30 candidates. They include several slow-growth advocates who fought long and hard for cityhood, at least two candidates who oppose cityhood and several others who, while opposing it in the past, say they now favor cityhood and want to have a say in Malibu’s future.

The election, some say, amounts to a referendum on whether the community long famous for its celebrities and surf remains a semi-rural enclave or, as some fear, becomes a resort on the order of Miami Beach. The outcome is of critical importance to developers who own land in the area, and to environmentalists who want to preserve the slender stretch of Malibu coastline.

Cityhood backers, many of whom have long viewed incorporation as their best chance to stop the county from installing a regional sewer system in Malibu, have predicted that it will pass by a wide margin.

“All of our phone research in the last couple of months indicates that it has about 80% support,” said Audrey Beatty, co-chairwoman of MCI/YES on Y, a pro-cityhood group that was formerly the Malibu Committee for Incorporation.

However, not everyone agrees.

“There is a silent majority that has trepidation about cityhood, and if they come out and vote, I think there will be some surprises,” cityhood opponent Bob Greenberg said.

As proposed, the 20-square-mile city would stretch from Topanga Canyon to Leo Carrillo State Beach and nearly one mile inland. It would have a population of about 25,000, and about 8,500 registered voters.

Of the 30 candidates, most observers expect about a dozen to attract substantial support.

“There are a few candidates that only their friends and relatives will vote for,” said one political consultant, who asked not to be identified. “There probably aren’t more than 12 to 15 (candidates) that you can consider serious.”

Among those most often mentioned as favorites are Walt Keller, former co-chairman of the Malibu Committee for Incorporation; Larry Wan, former head of the Malibu Township Council, and John Merrick, a retired Municipal Court judge.

Last week, the Malibu Times endorsed all three men, along with Mike Caggiano, long associated with the Malibu Township Council, and land-use attorney Paul Shoop, who has far outspent other candidates while declining to accept campaign contributions.

Shoop and Merrick are among several candidates who have opposed cityhood in the past and who have had to fend off accusations from opponents who contend that they have ties to developers.

Developers, who may have the most to lose should voters approve cityhood and an anti-sewer, slow-growth majority is elected to the City Council, have been noticeably absent from the debate over incorporation.

Until two weeks ago there was no organized opposition to cityhood.

Since then, Concerned Citizens for Protecting Malibu’s Future has advertised heavily in local newspapers and distributed material at candidate forums and other campaign events.

The group contends that Malibu’s projected $5-million budget is not adequate and that a new city of Malibu could face financial ruin from liability as a result of landslides.

Cityhood supporters accuse the group of being a front for developers and have complained that, as of last week, the organization had not disclosed the source of its finances as state law requires.

Meanwhile, a few of Malibu’s large landowners appear to have concluded that passage of cityhood is inevitable.

The Malibu Bay Co., which owns property in the Civic Center area and elsewhere, helped sponsor a candidate fair, and Hughes Aircraft, which has a large research facility in Malibu, took out ads in a local newspaper commending cityhood.

For cityhood backers, however, a bigger surprise was when Sylvia R. A. Neville, managing general partner of the Adamson Cos., told a Malibu newspaper that she supports cityhood, even though her company earlier sided with the county in a bid to delay Malibu’s efforts to incorporate.

The company’s plans to build a $65-million, 300-room luxury hotel in Malibu, and Pepperdine University’s plans to double the size of its campus, depend on the sewer system’s being built.

Several council candidates have said that, if elected, they will immediately push to have the city try to block the county from starting work on the sewer.

As part of the Local Agency Formation Commission’s approval of Malibu’s cityhood bid last year, the county will have jurisdiction of any sewer system for up to 10 years after incorporation. But lawyers for cityhood supporters have said they do not believe that the provision is valid.

After being ordered by a judge in April to set the election, the county Board of Supervisors sought to delay the actual incorporation date until next March, if cityhood is approved, in a bid to start work on the sewer before a new city government has the chance to block it.

However, another judge sided with cityhood backers and ruled that the supervisors had no authority to impose the delay.

Even last week, lawyers for the county tried unsuccessfully to persuade Superior Court Judge John Zebrowski to prevent a City Council from taking office, should cityhood be approved, until an appeals court considers the county’s argument.

Unless an appellate court intervenes, if cityhood is approved, Malibu would become a city after the election results have been certified, probably in late June or early July.